Heading into a tough part of the year, we need mental support tools. The classic French dictée format to teach writing and reading is a powerful tool indeed. I think of dictée as a nice complementary activity to stories. I can even teach grammar during a dictée without using of a book. When would I teach grammar? When I was having a bad day and didn’t feel like doing a story. No rules.
I have advocated doing dictées for about fifteen years online now. It’s not heavily aligned with the research, but, as stated, it does align with our mental health needs, which is far more important than aligning with the research. (Krashen didn’t do the research in school settings. Had he done so, he would have come up with some real gibberish, because CI and schools mix as well as oil and water on some days.)
We do dictation about ten minutes per week, more if we need time to rest and regroup in a noisy class. But the get squirmy in fifteen minutes tops. Dictée involves maybe three to five sentences at the most. A rowdy class can’t handle more than three; focused classes can handle five sentences.
In dictée, the subject matter is based on the last story they did, and thus their writing is not random, which is a huge factor in the kids’ confidence, as they are able to connect what they are being asked to do to known auditory information in their brains.
The kids like to write in this time-tested way. The dictée provides the kids with a nice break from stories, as they are invited to move primarily back into the analytical hemisphere of the brain for a while. They try to arrange sound that they understand into writing.
The kids write their dictées in their composition books. These are the black and white bound kind which are so easy to stack up and grade, and which remain in my classroom always, along with the spoon-pencils, since I don’t allow kids to have pencils, or any objects at all, in their hands during stories.
After the story I go to the LCD projector, and the students write the just-completed story as I dictate it. The key point in dictée, a rule I consider more sacred in my classroom than the rules I have for stories about speaking English, etc., is that there be no speaking by the students during dictée. This must be enforced 100% of the time, or dictée is ineffective.
Students speaking during dictation is much more egregious, even, than speaking during stories – it just defeats the neurological purpose. If you think this is something you cannot do, stop reading, because again, without this rule dictée simply does not work. Neither must you, the instructor, speak English during dictée. As long as English is not involved, dictée creates a wonderful flow of language, and connections occur in the minds of the students about how language is structured.
Dictée really bridges the gap between sound and writing, melding the two, moving information across the hemispheres. I just refer to the story written by the story writer, saying parts of each sentence three times, no more and no less, with enough pause to allow the students to write comfortably. I always remember to include all punctuation instructions in the target language.
On line one (of three), the students write what they hear. Again, I am sure to read slowly and allow enough time for them to write. I tell the kids that what they write on that top line will not be graded, but they are to make their best effort. They obviously don’t see the correct version until they have tried to write the sentence correctly themselves.
So I just recreate the story on the LCD projector. The dictated version of the story doesn’t have to be perfectly accurate. In fact, intentional errors as you re-create the story force deeper thinking by the students, and allow you to introduce new vocabulary.
I show them the correct version of the text at the proper time, phrase by phrase, or chunk by chunk, and not sentence by sentence, which is too complex. The students then bring down any corrections of the text that are needed onto line 2. I grade whatever is correct from line 1 and any corrections made on line 2. In this way, the students are graded on how well they can copy!
Of course, those who wrote the line perfectly the first time want everybody to know it, but, since they can’t talk, I ask them to kind of give a wave of their hand up and down in a swooping motion to show that they got it right. I always acknowledge those kids with positive comments in French because nothing motivates like success.
Line three is just a line space to make everything clearer and easier to read. But this line can also be used, if you want to eat up some minutes to the bell (and who hasn’t wanted to do that in their careers?) to have the kids write the translation of the dictation in the L1 on that line.
The benefits of doing this are obvious. The kids participate to a very high degree, because they know that working hard at this task of processing sound into writing will bring them an easy grade, which increases their overall motivation in the class.
A PLC colleague comments on dictée:
“Dictée is so good for my kids! The ones who want to do everything right find their spelling improving by leaps and bounds. The ones who struggle get an easy 100 by doing it. It boosts their confidence and makes them feel successful. It is a non-negotiable activity in my program now.”
We need to go slowly when dictating, just like in stories. There is so much processing going on! We would want our teacher to go slowly in dictation if we were the students. I am learning to put bigger gaps between the three sentences or chunks of sentences, and the kids really appreciate that. I read each chunk of words normally the first time while the kids listen, the second time I read the chunk very slowly so that they can write it, and the third chunk I read a bit faster while they look over what they have written.
We often really disregard the research by having a grammar discussion after the dictation. I sometimes ask the kids to read chorally, and then individually. They really enjoy reading the correct text off the overhead screen. Their accents are usually pretty good, because, we must remember, they heard over fifty minutes of those same words just the day before as we created the story. But they don’t have to speak, ever.
Readers who want to read more on this site on this topic are invited to simply search the term dictée in the search bar to the right of this page. There are other articles.